Formatting Marks – Nonprinting Characters – Codes
In a printed document, characters such as spaces, tabs and paragraph marks are invisible. However, Word lets you display such formatting marks on the screen. Formatting marks are also known as nonprinting characters or codes.
In this article you will learn how the formatting marks work and why they are useful.
Latest updated 22-Oct-2019. Video renewed in order to work without using Adobe Flash Player.
The basics about formatting marks
Some of the basic formatting marks
When formatting marks are turned on, you will see spaces, tabs, paragraph marks and other formatting marks on the screen. Some of the basic formatting marks are illustrated below.
Keyboard shortcut
Ctrl+Shift+8 can be used to turn formatting marks on and off.
You can also turn formatting marks on and off by clicking the pilcrow symbol ¶ on the Home tab of the Ribbon (found in the Standard toolbar in Word 2003).
Where to find the options for formatting marks:
For an introduction to the formatting marks and for information about how to turn them on and off, view the video below.
View video - see how formatting marks work
Note that the video below was originally made using Word 2003. The formatting marks work the same way in Word 2007 and later versions of Word. Information about where to find options for formatting marks in Word 2007 and later versions has been added in the video. You will also find that information in written text in this article.
Visible formatting marks help you keep track of formatting
Many users who are not familiar with formatting marks get confused if they by incident turn on the formatting marks. However, if you need to control the formatting of documents down to the last detail, visible formatting marks are a must.
It may take some time getting used to work with visible formatting marks but it is well worth the effort.
About display of text boundaries
In addition to the formatting marks, the video illustrates how the option Text boundaries works. In Word 2003, Word 2007 and Word 2010, you can turn on text boundaries to have dotted lines shown around margins. This is very useful for layout purposes. Unfortunately, Word 2013 and newer Word versions display text boundaries as dotted lines around each paragraph instead which makes the option very little useful in those versions of Word.
Where to find the option for text boundaries:
Related information
You will find more details on this subject in the article What do all those funny marks, like the dots between the words in my document, and the square bullets in the left margin, mean? found at the Word MVP site.